Toole avenue is going to start looking a lot nicer now.
WAMO buys warehouse at 197 E. Toole
By Teya Vitu
The overnight transformation of a bleak row of weathered warehouses on Toole Avenue starts May 14 with the planting of some 50 trees and the installation of various benches, art works and even a bus stop.
This is the realization of the long-murmured Art Walk, which was already a mature idea when drawn into the 2004 Tucson Historic Warehouse Arts District Master Plan.
The Art Walk will come right at the heels of the Warehouse Arts Management Organization completing the late March tortuous acquisition of the big blue warehouse at 197 E. Toole Ave. once known as the Toole Shed - and, yes, once again being called the Toole Shed Studios.
This is the first time WAMO, established in 2004, has owned property. Equally significant, WAMO’s new holdings now puts all the formerly state-owned warehouses on Toole Avenue between Stone and Sixth avenues in private hands.
This include the former Zee’s Warehouse, 1 E. Toole, bought at auction in November 2009 by Peach Properties; the neighboring 15-17-19 E. Toole warehouses auctioned the same day to Steve Fenton; the adjoining Solar Culture and Arches warehouses at 31 and 35 E. Toole auctioned to Fenton in April 2010, and Peach Properties submitting the winning bid that same day on 119 E. Toole, new home for Dinnerware Artspace and the soon-to-open Borderlands Brewery.
WAMO paid the market value $166,000 for the 197 E. Toole warehouse, financed by a five-year loan from the Tucson Industrial Development Authority. WAMO President Elizabeth Burden is confident that rents paid by artists and possible additional fundraising will retire the loan on time. The city still owns the land underneath the warehouse.
“Owning the Toole Shed fulfills a couple items in our mission statement,” Burden started, “in that we believe there needs to be artist-owned and artist-managed space and to ensure artists will be there for a long time. What owning the Toole Shed allows us to do is take another step in perpetuating artists’ role.”
WAMO is also negotiating with the city to buy the Steinfeld Warehouse, 101 W. Sixth St., from which the Arizona Department of Transportation evicted long-time tenant artists in July 2007. Since then the city took over ownership of the Steinfeld and Toole Shed in a land-swap with ADOT.
WAMO is a private, 501(c) 3 nonprofit, which was created in 2004 as the first recommendation implemented from the warehouse district master plan. WAMO’s mission is to preserve, protect, promote, and program the Warehouse Arts District, a warehouse-laden artist’s haven along Toole Avenue, Sixth Street and Sixth Avenue.
There Toole Shed open house from 5 to 7 p.m. on April 16, the same day as the Open Studios Tour. WAMO has a Web site at
http://thewarehouseartsdistrict.com/.
“This is one of the few, if not only, master plans the city adopted that has made progress,” Burden said. “There are significant pieces of it coming to fruition. The next piece of it is the greening of Toole Avenue with the Art Walk.”
Like most overnight successes, even though the casual observer may have seen nothing promising happening on Toole Avenue throughout the 2000s, WAMO has worked pretty much nonstop since 2004 to preserve and protect the warehouses as artist studios and galleries.
There were no guarantees at all that the artist presence would be maintained as ADOT made it clear anybody could bid at auction. In fact, Fenton’s acquisition of his three warehouses raised alarms because nobody was sure if Fenton was at all committed to the arts-driven master plan.
Indeed, WAMO had put in a losing bid on the Solar Culture warehouse, but Fenton ultimately surprised the artist crowd with his commitment to the status quo.
Meanwhile, the city was rather poker-faced for a couple years before trading land with the state to acquire the Steinfeld and Toole Shed warehouses. WAMO had negotiated with the city to issue requests for proposals rather than go to auction, and WAMO convinced the city to add deed restriction that the buildings can only be used for arts uses.
Now WAMO’s garden is suddenly blooming and, quite by coincidence, the rest of the Downtown garden is barely a year into blooming itself.
“The metaphor of a garden is a good one,” Burden said. “2004 to now we were doing all the cultivation work, pulling weeds and gathering tools so the garden can grow.”
The 197 E. Toole warehouse long was home to the Museum of Contemporary Art, but there had always been artist studios in back prior to MOCA, during MOCA, and after MOCA left.
Burden said a gallery space will be installed at the front of the Toole Shed and neighboring Skrappy’s will have a retail space up front, too.
Meanwhile, the warehouse with the arches at 35 E. Toole that is called Arches is filled up with artists and a specialty toy shop. The 1 E. Toole warehouse is the only one whose future is undetermined so far.
Peach Property owners Ron and Patricia Schwabe have stripped 1 E. Toole down to an empty shell and stabilized the building.
“We’re hoping to determine the users by summer,” Patricia Schwabe said. “We hope to have a direction in summer. People rent in summer.”
The Schwabes are considering whether to get one large tenant or hire a manager to bring in numerous smaller tenants.
“We are lighting a fuse,” Ron Schwabe said. “There will be an explosion of energy and action on Toole Avenue. This is where it’s starting.”
http://www.downtowntucson.org/news/?p=3187
Prev
Is this 'trolley' too slow? Too many stops? Not much rail tracks? Please explain.
the TEP building looks nice. I've said this again and I'll say it again - the Chicago Music Store needs at least a facade renovation. It's an eyesore.
Linear Mode
